Would require voters to approve state tax increase for education

School districts in Northeastern Colorado would see an increase in funding if the legislature approves a bill to modify the Colorado School Finance Formula. (Callie Jones / Sterling Journal-Advocate)

Local school superintendents are joining with superintendents across Colorado in seeking to change how the state distributes money to school districts, but it will require voters to approve a $1.7 billion tax increase for education.

On Wednesday, Colorado superintendents held a press conference in Denver to present their plan for a new Colorado School Finance formula. The press conference came just days after Representative Dave Young introduced a bill to modify the Colorado School Finance Formula, HB18-1232 (also sponsored by Senators Andy Kerr and Don Coram), to the House of Representatives on Monday.

"This funding formula is based on true needs to educate our students and maintain our school facilities," said RE-1 Valley Superintendent Dr. Jan DeLay, who was at the press conference. "The current formula was created in 1994. What other business or government entity is working with a 1994 funding formula? Our district could finally have the means to retain our quality teachers, and not be the training ground for the Front Range. This formula provides equity and adequate funding for our schools and students in RE-1 Valley. However, it's just the model that is very well researched; it needs the other partner ballot proposal for our voters that would approve funding for this model."

" I am in support because our current school finance act was created in 1994, before all of the accountability measures were in place. The current law is very difficult to understand and it was our intent to make the new one more transparent and easier to understand," Sanders told the Journal-Advocate. "I also support it because it is a student-centric model, meaning we wanted to create something that was not only adequate but also equitable. People really need to understand that what we created was a distribution method. We did not talk about where the money would come from. We approached it from this question - What would it take to educate a child? and then looked at it as what would it take to educate a child in poverty, with English as a secondary language, with special needs etc..... So we developed policy only."

Sanders pointed out that because of the negative factor, now called the budget stabilization factor, a method the legislature used to reduce the Amendment 23-mandated increase in school funding in recent years, Buffalo School District has lost more than one year of its total budget.

"So, on the dollar side, we looked at many different states and how they were funded. We used people from the Colorado School Finance Project to help us figure out the dollar side. What we came up with, in a perfect world and with all the stars aligning, in order to bring us to just under national averages in school finance Merino would need approximately $1.4 million additional dollars per year. That is if the formula is fully funded," Sanders said.

Peetz Plateau RE-5 School District Superintendent Mark Collard is also supporting the new formula.

"I am supporting this effort because we need to find a way to adequately fund our schools. The funding formula used today was initiated in 1994 and has not been updated to account for additional mandates that have been imparted on school districts over the last several years," he told the Journal-Advocate. "These mandates combined with the failure to fund Amendment 23 have impacted all districts in Colorado, but has hit small rural districts particularly hard. Without additional revenue at the state level school funding will continue to be a challenge. This plan addresses the need for additional revenues that we will need to fund schools at the level Colorado voters intended when they passed Amendment 23." ,

Collard noted if Peetz was funded at the level Amendment 23 had intended they would have received an additional $263,000 for this fiscal year.

"The new funding plan would restore this missing revenue to our annual budget. This additional revenue would allow us to restore some teaching positions that were cut, start replacing buses, and doing other facility repairs that are always being put off 'until next year,' he said.

Frenchman RE-3 School District (Fleming) Superintendent Steve McCracken is supporting the measure as well.

For HB 1232, 171 superintendents representing more than 90 percent of students in Colorado's schools — rural, suburban and urban — have agreed on how a larger school finance pie should be divided so that it's fair to all students.

"We have a unique opportunity in that people who have deep knowledge of our schools, this diverse group of superintendents, have reached a consensus that we haven't seen before," Rep. Young said in a Chalkbeat Colorado article.

The bill aspires to provide all 178 Colorado school districts with an increased level of funding for all students, while at the same time establishing a more equitable distribution of funding for students who are underserved and/or face the greatest challenges to achieving Colorado's graduation guidelines and finishing high school ready for college and career.

The new school finance formula, however, is dependent on voters approving a ballot measure no later than 2022 to increase state revenue for funding preschool through high school public education, which is not included in the bill.

Under this new formula, a school district's total funding would be calculated by starting with statewide base per pupil funding and adding additional funding for student and district characteristics in the form of district factor funding as follows:

• Size factor funding;

• Poverty factor funding for students eligible for free or reduced-price meals;

• English language learner factor funding, adjusted for district size;

• Gifted child factor funding, adjusted for district size;

• Special education factor funding, adjusted for disability and district size; and

• Cost of living factor funding, limited to a percentage of statewide cost of living factor funding.

In calculating district total program funding, the new formula:

• Counts kindergarten students as half-day or full-day pupils depending on the length of the kindergarten program;

• Counts preschool students as half-day pupils, anticipating conforming changes to the Colorado preschool program, following enactment of the bill, to remove limits on the number of 4- and 5-year-old pupils attending state-funded preschool and the pupil eligibility criteria for 4- and 5-year-old pupils;

• Differentiates between pupils with specified disabilities for purposes of determining the new special education factor funding, anticipating conforming changes to categorical funding programs, following enactment of the bill, to use special education categorical funding only for high-cost disability reimbursement grants; and

•Applies English language learner factor funding for up to seven years to all English language learners, except for those students with no English proficiency, anticipating conforming changes to categorical funding programs, following enactment of the bill, to use categorical funding only for students with no English proficiency.

The bill also creates a hold-harmless provision if a district's total program funding under the new public school funding distribution formula is less than it was under the 1994 formula without the budget stabilization reduction in funding.

Under the new formula, RE-1's total program funding would increase from $17,012,221 to $22,057,478. It's important to note that RE-1 should be getting $18,396,508 under the current School Finance Act, but is only getting $17 million due to the budget stabilization factor.

The new formula would have an impact on other local school districts too. Buffalo RE-4J's (Merino) total program funding would increase from $3,189,995 to $4,593,436; Frenchman RE-3's (Fleming) funding would increase from $2,358,044 to $3,212,116; Plateau RE-5's (Peetz) funding would increase from $2,165,770 to $2,863,172; Haxtun RE-2J's funding would increase from $2,932,426 to $4,553,975; and Prairie RE-11's funding would increase from $2,547,992 to $3,301,924.

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